Pink is a color made by mixing red and white and sometimes described as being a light red, but it is more accurately a bright undersaturated red. There are many different shades of this color. "Pink" was not a color word known to Shakespeare: it was invented in the 17th century to described the light red flowers of pinks, flowering plants in the genus Dianthus, possibly named from the "pinked" edges of their petals appearing to have been cut with pinking shears.

Usage, symbolism, colloquial expressions

• The color of pink is now associated with womanhood, just like blue is associated with boys and manhood, although The Ladies Home Journal said the reverse was the "generally accepted rule" in an edition of 1918, describing pink as "more decided and stronger" whilst blue was "more delicate and dainty". Carrie, from Sex and the City, for example, is seen wearing pink dresses very often in the television series, and Elle, from the Legally Blonde movie series, prefers pink over any other color.

• While the west typically refers to adult films as "blue movies", in Japan these films are often called "Pink Movies". Associated with females and generally carries a connotation of feminine, innocent, childlike, or with other pastels as spring or flowers. Cherry blossoms tend to show pink so this relation may be hinted at as well in anime. Pink also carries a connotation of sexuality in Japan. This may be because of pink's association with women, or from the pink hue of flesh or a blush or any number of such reasons.

• Many feminists on the other hand have decried the color pink, along with dresses and skirts, as something related to the pre-feminism "old-style female", which they detest as a symbol of the oppression and limitations of that era, although many other girls and women have sought to reclaim some aspects of the old-style female, including pink, as something to be proud of.

• Pink is also associated with homosexuals, often in the form of a pink triangle. This symbolic usage stems from the symbols used by the Nazis to label their prisoners in the concentration camps [1]. Where Jews were forced to wear the familiar yellow stars of David, convicted homosexual men were forced to wear a pink triangle. Nowadays, it is often worn with pride. A Dutch newsgroup about homosexuality is called nl.roze, roze being Dutch for pink.

• Pink is the colour of the snooker ball which has a 6-point value.

Hot pink is bold and intense or, as Elsa Schiaparelli, the first to use hot pink called it, "shocking pink".

External link

• Google Answers--Pink, Why Feminine?

See also

• List of colors